It was released as the lead single from the band's fourth studio album, The Great Escape (1995), on 14 August 1995 by Food Records and Parlophone.

[7] "Country House" received a great deal of media attention when Blur's label Food Records moved the original release date to the same day as Oasis's "Roll with It".

"[10] David Stubbs from Melody Maker felt the song "sounds at first to be taunting us with that old Britpop standard, um, thingummy, the one that goes Our house is a very, very, very nice house/With two cats in the yard.. but turns out to be a cynical account of the miserable fat-rat city achiever attempting to find solace in the big rural pile of his dreams — a seemingly chirpy but ultimately very unsettling vignette hinting at Blur's darker edges.

In the space of the time-honoured three-and-a-bit minutes, it manages to recall everyone from Madness to The Beatles to, um, Chas and Dave, craft the most infectious chorus of modern times and still squeeze in the astonishing line He's reading Balzac, knocking back Prozac before tea-time.

"[14] The music video for "Country House" was directed by English artist and art collector Damien Hirst, who had attended Goldsmiths, University of London, with members of Blur.

The band appears in the video alongside British comic actor Matt Lucas and models Sara Stockbridge, Jo Guest and Vanessa Upton.

It features pastiches of—or tributes to—Benny Hill (Lucas' doctor chasing scantily clad young women culminating in the entry of the milk van of Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)) and Queen's 1975 video for "Bohemian Rhapsody".

Note: All tracks were recorded live at the Mile End Stadium in London, England, on 17 June 1995